" The arcade hit comes home to the Dreamcast!"

The Game

Based on the smash arcade hit by Sega, in this game you control 1 of 4 cabbies, and go cruising around town, taking civilians to there destination within a certain time limit to earn cash. Will this game gave us all the same thrills we experienced from the arcade version of the game, or fail miserably? Lets get onto the review and find out.

Graphics

WOW! An arcade perfect translation, both the arcade and Dreamcast versions of the game use the Naomi software, so this game looks exactly how it did in the arcades. All of the game's visuals are fantastic, the citie look great where you can tell apart the banks, parks, Pizza Huts, and Kentucky Fried Chicken's. All the cars are detailed down to every notch to where you can see other cars on the road using their blinkers, and all the civilians look great, and surprisingly stick out in front of all the cars driving along from a little kid, to a pregnant woman. And to make sure you know which driver needs to hitch a ride, a big old polygon is surrounding the area you can pick him up him. Their really isn't nothing bad about the graphics, there's no slowdown going on at all during all this wacky action, no noticeable missing details from the visuals at all, so graphics are the best thing in this game.

Sound

The soundtrack for this game rules! Sega got hit bands like Offspring and Bad Religion to do some exclusive tunes for this game. I always got that ''All I Want'' song stuck in my head. There's lots of voice samples in this game too, where the people you cab around demanding you step the wheel or slowdown and telling you where to go and, your cabbies responding to them with some rather smart remarks. The guy who introduces the game gets annoying right away, but it really doesn't effect the score of the sound any ways.

Game play

The game controls rather smooth and easy like the arcade version, where you use the L & R triggers to accelerate and brake, and the B button to shift drive and reverse gears, and that's about it. The control stick allows for easy steering so you'll be getting the controls down for this game in no time with ease.

Now onto the game modes. For starters, you got Arcade mode where you can play by Arcade rules where you get extra seconds for game play time depending on how fast you take your customers to there destination. Then there's original mode where you get to cruise around where for either 3, 5, or 10 minutes, but there's only one city to drive around in, and you don't get extra seconds added to your time like in arcade mode. Game control is pretty good in the game, but it's kinda hard to steer your car underwater(kinda unbelievable you can actually drive underground too!). Sometimes it's hard to keep your eye on the arrow and on the road at once, and every now and then you might miss a turn, which will make you get a little frustrated at the game. But exclusive to the Dreamcast version of the game is the Crazy Box mode, consisting of 9 mini games, and 6 hidden mini-games that have wacky challenges like taking a customer to a destination following a series of ramps and not falling into the water, or driving up a parking ramp through heavy traffic in a short amount of time, and there's just so much to do. You can have up to 4 save files on your VMU, and it also keeps track of high scores for bragging rights.

Replay Value

The Crazy Box mode sure does add a lot of replay value by adding all those exclusive, Dreamcast only, mini-games for lots of added fun, But where's the 2-player mode? You think Sega could've squeezed in some sort of multi player mode, so this game might not be as playable as you though it was. With just the added Crazy Box feature and the Arcade and Original modes, I only found myself playing this game for about a month or two before it hit the closet.

In Brief

+: Perfect arcade-to-console translation, Added Crazy Box mini games are fun to play

-: A 2-player mode seemed like a must for the console version that was not in here, seems like more other features could've been added

The Final Ratings Rundown

Graphics: 9.3Sound: 9.0Game play: 8.1Replay Value: 5.8

Overall: 8.0

Rounded to fit GameFAQs Score: 8

Final Analysis

A great, fun conversion of the arcade hit. If you love the arcade version, then pick it up for Dreamcast and save yourself a lot of quarters, but if you're looking for a lot of extras, and I mean a lot of extras, then you might be disappointed, sure the crazy box is full of fun mini games, but a 2-player mode would've made the game just perfect, so I only recommend buying this game if you really liked the arcade version, but if you weren't the biggest fan, I say just rent the game a few times and you'll be done with it.